Nobody's Perfect
The Good: The use of the Metal Man, and the way Max was using them was a really neat touch. Especially how the art occasionally switched from how they see things and how things really are.
In the tradition of drawing characters you haven't been thinking about recently into this story, Professor Ivo.
A nice throwback to #6 with a bit of dialogue between Booster and Captain Atom.
The setup for 'Alloy' was a really well done scene. Lots of excellent atmosphere and use of just the right angles and views to covey the scene so well.
As always, lots of fantastic dialogue from Rocket Red, and now that Fire respects him we see a different dynamic, further tweaked by Ice noticing this.
What happens to Ice at the end is really badass.
Lopresti/Ryan issue, so nothing to complain about art wise.
The Bad: SHITTY. COVER.
Not only is the cover really dull and dumb, it's also a big spoiler. As soon as Ivo says 'Alloy' you go, "Oh, so they're going to fuse into that thing on the cover who clearly has the colors to match.
Speaking of, the whole 'fusing together into a patchwork monster' thing is a severe cliche. I was surprisingly fine with it on JLA/JSA: The Dark Things but I saw A LOT of people complain that it's always ben dumb. Which is why I was surprised to see it here. Generation Lost has had a habit of presenting prefect opportunity for cliches and then brilliantly twisting them in a 180, but this one played out normally.
And another thing, where was copper? Griffen WROTE the only Metal Men thing I read, which was the most recent, and he was a writer for the beginning of this series. So, where was Copper?
I LOVED the little back and forth between perspectives at the beginning. Umm, why did they stop that? It would've been a great way to do the fight but they pretty much gave it up as soon as we saw what Ice, Fire, and Rocket Red looked like in their minds for the first time. It got me so excited to see this kind of back and forth perspective fight that I felt really let down at the missed opportunity. (Venture Brothers fans, think the end of Past Tense where we saw brock beating up the main cast back in college matching the action of the current fight where he was beating up the old Team Venture exactly. Wouldn't that be awesome here?)
In ANOTHER cliche we have Ice going crazy. I feel fine about the event itself, it's just that she goes into her crazed state WAY too quickly. Like, I seriously wonder how in god's name this could've NEVER happened before. Fire got punched ONCE into unconsciousness, AND GOT UP A FEW SECONDS LATER. And then Ice herself was getting punched a lot, but I just didn't feel the tension as I should. It felt like an ass pull. Like Alloy was an excuse to make Ice go berserk and Ice going berserk was an excuse to defeat Alloy. A closed circle of pointlessness.
In Conclusion: 3/5
The humor and quality of dialogue was still there, the cool tiny glances at Maxwell Lord's plan were there, the nice little touches were there, but the main plot itself felt very lacking and full of too many cliches that made excuses to make other cliches. The issue wasn't too great, but the presentation of it was still as excellent as usual.
P.S. - WORST COVER IN THE SERIES. Seriously, it looks like one of the lamer Kevin Maguire covers but with WORSE ART. GET DUSTIN NGUYEN ON THE COVERS QUICK.
